The US will push NATO members to do more to protect Turkey

U.S. President Barack Obama and Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan attend the NATO Summit at the Celtic Manor Resort in Newport, Wales September 5, 2014. REUTERS/Larry Downing BRUSSELS (Reuters) - NATO allies sought on Tuesday to strengthen Turkey's defenses along its Syrian border after the United States withdrew its missile defense battery for modernization, leaving Ankara exposed as Russia intensifies actions in the area.

Germany has also removed its Patriot battery supporting Turkish air defenses on the frontier, leaving Spain as lone NATO ally with Patriots there, and raising strategy questions at a time when Ankara says it faces Russian airspace violations.

"We need to support Turkey," Canada's Foreign Minister Stephane Dion said on arrival in Brussels for meetings with his NATO peers, as offers of ships and aircraft began to trickle in from allies.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will also push for other NATO members to do more to protect Turkey as well as to step up actions in the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State militants in Syria, a senior State Department official said.

"We have a number of allies who are considering increasing their effort to support Turkish sovereignty and security, but also looking at operations in Syria, adding to what the French have been doing over recent weeks," the official told reporters. "The secretary will make the case that we need even more."

Foreign ministers are expected to formally agree on Tuesday to send more military hardware to Turkey's borders and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said he expected a decisions on a package "within weeks".

NATO deployed its Patriot missiles along the border in January 2013, to shoot down any missiles from Syria's conflict fired into Turkish territory. Ankara had appealed to the alliance to maintain the defenses even before the flare-up of tensions with Russia over airspace violations.

Institute for the Study of War Turkey shot down a Russian bomber in its airspace on Nov. 24, in the first known incident of its kind since the Cold War.

While the Turkish air force has shown it is capable of intercepting Russian jets on bombing raids in Syria that stray into Turkish airspace, diplomats say sending military support to Turkey is also designed to reassure Ankara and calm tensions.

So far, the United States has moved jets to the Turkish NATO air base Incirlik, while Britain has said it will also send jets to the region. Germany and Denmark are sending ships to the NATO fleet in the eastern Mediterranean.

Seeking to engage with Russia to defeat Islamic State, NATO's Stoltenberg said strengthening the Turkish air defense was not a knee-jerk reaction to the Nov.24 incident.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin (front L) and Turkey's Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan (front R), with Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov of Russia (L) and Ahmet Davutoglu (C) of Turkey in the background Osman Orsal/Reuters "We have decided to address the need to support Turkey before the incident last week," he said. "The focus now should be on how we can de-escalate and how we can calm tensions."

However, diplomats noted that Islamic State does not have an air force that could confront NATO's anti-aircraft deterrents.

Russia has said it will move a modern air defense system that can hit missiles and aircraft from up to 400 kilometers away to its Syrian base at Latakia.